Sam Gold
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I want to think that in this moment, after the pandemic, and after people have had enough years, like, completely addicted to their phones, that young people are starting to really crave theater. I just was filled with... the desire to make something for young people. And I could see, you know, it was the spring and I was seeing November 5th coming, you know, we have this election.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I think I've maybe overemphasized that what we are making will stand alone, and people will just enter, they'll suspend their disbelief, and they will stop seeing Kendall Roy the second Jeremy enters, and they will start seeing Thomas Stockman. Yeah. I don't know that that's always been successful because you can't rip that away from people.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And listen, theater is too obsessed with celebrity, but it's also saving the theater from financial ruin to be so obsessed with celebrity. And listen, Jeremy Strong was a brilliant actor 20 years before he was in Succession.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
have done multiple plays together. We grew up together. We've been friends since college. I don't think of him as Kendall Roy from Succession at all. That's like very low on my list of references in my mind to the work of Jeremy Strong. So maybe I... underestimated that most people's relationship to Jeremy is much different than mine.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And I didn't really think about Kendall Roy, and maybe I should have.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Yes, we have made this term and sort of... You know, when Richard Burton was playing Hamlet and Elizabeth Taylor would sit in the balcony to watch... everyone would line up around the fucking block to try to see Liz Taylor, right? They weren't coming for Richard Burton's Hamlet. They were coming to see Elizabeth Taylor. And that's always been the case.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And I think it was the case in Shakespeare's time. And there's nothing I'm enjoying more right now than the fact that there's 19-year-old audience members hearing and understanding the poetry of Shakespeare and then being so excited at the end that they want to stand for an hour to meet the person that delivered that language. And I do think that's part of it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Part of it is that they love Heartstopper. Part of it is that they're addicted to their phones. But part of it is that the play lit them up. But I don't think it's a bad thing for the theater that these young people are – I mean, our stage door is crazy. I saw it, dude. And I don't think that's a bad thing. No, it seemed like a sign of health.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Yeah, like if those people come see another play, people need theater. Yes. We know we need to get in a room and tell stories. It is not good. No one thinks, like the Surgeon General is telling you, it is not good to be at home looking at social media all the time. We are in a mental health crisis. Teen suicide. I'm doing a play about teen suicide, right? I'm doing a play about teen suicide.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And all those young people are coming. And I think we can help them. That can be good.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
What if I tried to open a play around the election that was gonna sort of put a fire under young people about what's really, really hard about life right now? Yeah. And I immediately thought of Romeo and Juliet, you know, two households both alike in dignity. That's the first two lines of the play. It's like we're more the same than we are different.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And theater becomes this place where we can come together. Even if you feel really differently than the person sitting next to you about who you're going to vote for, you breathe that same air. And Romeo and Juliet's a play where... Shakespeare is sacrificing these two kids with the idea that maybe the adults would wake up a bit to the ways they're hurting each other unnecessarily.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
That's the thesis of that play.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I was like, what if we make a show where that generation of audience member feels spoken to, feels like this is for me, feels like I can come to this, I feel oriented. And then what you give them is Shakespeare, right? They want to be there and they want to take in this ritual that really reflects something deep about our society. And they do. Sort of 18 to 25 is sort of our audience.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And they are laughing at 400-year-old jokes. They are hearing – the wit, the poetry, the rhymes, the scansion, the sonnets, and they are responding to the language. They're not laughing at Kit's triceps. They're laughing at Shakespeare. You know, they're really hearing the play. So that was the goal. It was never... I did not mean to denigrate kids. It's not to be cynical.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I wanted the world on stage to reflect the world that that generation of audience member experiences in life, which is what Shakespeare did. Shakespeare was a populist, and Shakespeare was putting plays on to communicate very directly with his popular audience. The jokes were of the moment. There's a song referenced in Romeo and Juliet,
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
The nurse's servant, Peter, after everybody thinks Juliet's dead, says to the musicians, because there are always live musicians in a Shakespeare play, and they sort of break the fourth wall. And Peter says to the musician that is underscoring the Shakespeare play, will you play Heart's Ease? Because my heart is full, and we need a silly dump to comfort us.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
So I use a pop song from this generation's vocabulary because that's what Shakespeare was doing. He was taking a song everybody knew and making a joke using it to lighten the mood on stage. And that's what I'm doing. It's not cynical. It's genuinely trying to do for a young audience now what I firmly believe is what Shakespeare was trying to do with his audience.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
How sweet... You, Sam, you've directed now all five of Shakespeare's tragedies.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Yes. And, you know, my sort of mentor coming up was the director, Elizabeth LeCompte. And the way Liz would work is... From the Worcester Group.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
The Worcester Group. What she does is when she gets to the end of a project, she starts the next project sort of...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
from there like the set from one project becomes kind of the raw materials to start making the next one like they're all one they're all sort of flowing one to the next on these shakespeare's it really goes back to a feeling i had when i was in school i went to grad school at juilliard and there were these really young companies of actors and they you know they lived and breathed
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
You know, 24 hours a day they were together. They knew each other so well. They were all having sex with each other and breaking up and getting drunk at night in their dorm rooms and then getting up at 7 in the morning to do fitness class. And, you know, they were like – they were just so in it with each other. You know, that is ensemble. And when I was at school, I just loved making –
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
these plays with these young ensembles. So I've been trying to do that with these Shakespeare's to bring these ensembles together. And they all, all five of them come from that same place. They all were, I don't know, almost like kind of rough and ready school plays.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I'm really inspired by specific actors. So, you know, Gabby Beans came in to audition and all of a sudden it's like... Mercutio and the Friar. And, you know, what if Gabi is kind of Shakespeare, kind of the storyteller, kind of like holding it down for us, the emcee. That idea of Gabi as a kind of the emcee of the evening, that's just Gabi. That's me responding to her talent.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
A lot of people falsely sort of label me as like a deconstructionist or something because like they're wearing street clothes. Does that piss you off when people do that? It does piss me off because, well, it doesn't piss me off, but it's sad that they don't really know what they're saying when they're attributing that to me. I'm not deconstructing these plays. I'm doing the play. Right.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I've done plays where I think Ben Brantley said the playwright was rolling in his grave, which is not the most original piece of criticism. I think it's a gross misunderstanding of the difference between conventions and authentic engagement in a text.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Yeah, we have conventions, right? When you're going to go see an Ibsen play, this is what you picture it looking like. And those things come, those expectations come from some other successful period of theater history. You know, Richard Eyre does enough beautiful Ibsen plays at the Royal National Theater in the 90s.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And then we think of Ibsen as, when we close our eyes, we see some Richard Eyre production. But it's 40 years later, 30 years later, and that's a convention. It's not like that
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
It has nothing to do with it. And I'm actually just reading the play and engaging in the play. And I'm doing a ton of homework on what Elizabethan theater was like, what Elizabethan culture was like, what Elizabethan politics were like. I'm understanding what's going on in religious battles and political battles of the time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And then I'm thinking about what the playwright was trying to do vis-a-vis all those things and thinking about our own world. And how that play could best affect the audience that doesn't have those politics from 400 years ago has a different set of politics. So, I mean, with Romeo and Juliet, there will be people that think I have the sound too loud. The sound is loud. It's loud. It's fun.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
It's loud in there. And there will be audience members that say that is too loud. Yeah. That's fine with me because I have an interest in connecting this text to this specific audience that does not think it's too loud. Right. And I'm willing to hear the complaints because I have a sort of risk tolerance that I think has come from starting downtown. Right.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
The reason why I really love it is the proscenium theaters, the Broadway theaters, they were built in the 19th century with the idea that there was going to be an actor standing downstage center declaiming. I'm happy to see Ethel Merman stand down center. Like, if I could be taken back in time, I would enjoy going to those shows. It's not that I dislike it. It's that it's an old convention.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
And because of technological advances... It doesn't really make sense for every play to be done that way. A proscenium doesn't really speak to how a contemporary audience will best engage with storytelling live. And the round is much closer. You get this sort of over-the-shoulder shot that you're used to in a film. And you get intimacy that film has given us to actors.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
Like after the close-up, it's hard to sit at the back of a 1,000-seat, 2,000-seat theater. And at Circle in the Square, everybody's in a close-up. There's no bad – there are zero bad seats at Circle in the Square. And so you get that experience because I'm trying to do these plays that I'm saying they're kind of – grief rituals, right?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
We're trying to depict a trauma so that the audience can process their own trauma. That's sort of the basic idea. And I think they work a lot better when you can have intimacy, when you can feel close to the actors, when you can feel them breathe. So to me, the smaller the theater, the closer you can be to the actors, the more I'm able to do my job.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I mean, mostly what I'm doing is I'm trying to tell a story live with people and use every tool I can to make it as powerful as possible. And film is now deeply embedded in our psyche. But, like, there were all sorts of other kinds of popular entertainments, culture, storytelling that he's engaging with. So I'm just doing what I feel like Shakespeare's doing, you know? You know, wit.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
This idea in Elizabethan England, it's like a game, a sport, a thing to do after school. How are we to understand that when they, when Romeo and Mercutio and Benvolio wit as a verb? Yeah. How are we going to feel the sort of after-school activity of it the way Shakespeare's society did? And so I'm trying to pull from a toolbox. And one is film, you know.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
I kept referencing Quentin Tarantino during the Romeo and Juliet rehearsals. That's a populist, a populist adventurous artist, right? There's something about the way Shakespeare works that sort of reminds me a little bit about the way Quentin Tarantino works. They have some things in common about Shakespeare. willingness to go from something serious to something funny and back quickly.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
So you say, like, oh, how am I going to do this? How am I going to go from this super sad moment to this funny moment? And you think, oh, people aren't going to be able to do that. They won't be able to ride that wave. We don't do that anymore. But then I think, no, we do. Like in a Tarantino movie, we do, right? So I use film that way.